PREACHER Feature: “The Tombs”

Between a deal with the devil, underground fighting, and a lovelife-altering decision, a lot of souls are on the line in “The Tombs”.

Preacher Feature is a weekly look into the AMC show Preacher based on the comic book of the same name by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. In this column, Josh Versalle gives a breakdown of the events from the show, including how they relate to the comics, and speculates as to what’s going on and what might be coming up. So take heed, as SPOILERS follow.

“Are you not entertained?”

In the Tombs, men fight for their lives and their pawned souls while others watch like spectators at the Colosseum (in the flashback, Gladiator is in theaters and very much on Jesse’s mind). “The Tombs show us more of the events that shaped Jesse’s life. He is pulled between the merciless, bloodthirsty, soul-stealing world of Angelville and the compassion taught to him by his parents. Neither side has won out yet, as Jesse is thrilled to be announcing the fights, but warns one potential victim away when he thinks no one is watching. It seems Jody is always watching, though.

In the present, the battle for Jesse’s soul is still not resolved. He is once again presiding over the fights, this time as Cassidy triumphs over Hal. In between fights, Jesse helps Cassidy escape, though not in the most pleasant fashion. Jesse chops Cass up with a machete and tries to mail him away from Angelville. After a hilarious discussion between Jesse and Cassidy on the various other methods of escape that could have been employed, Jesse leaves Cassidy to be shipped off. Of course, Cassidy escapes the escape, leaving a bloody mess for the unfortunate employee of the combination shipping depot/froyo store.

“The worst person I ever loved”

Tulip, who has taken Madame Sabina Boyd hostage after a shootout in last episode, hears the reason why the Boyds hate Jesse so much. When Jesse was younger, he and Sabina were a couple. This is problematic, since the Boyds and L’Angelles are rivals in the fortune-telling game. During a pause in a make-out session, Jesse remembers TC’s warning that if Grand’ma finds out about Sabina, Sabina will end up a prisoner of the Tombs. Unable to tell her the truth, but not wanting her to be damned, Jesse calls her (and the rest of the Boyds) trash and leaves. Later Sabina’s brother Kenny comes to the Tombs to fight Jesse for his sister’s honor. Jesse chokes him to death, creating an irreparable rift between the two clans.

“The Tombs are closed.”…Or Are They?

Thinking he has sent Cass away and ruined the fight, Jesse tells off the crowd, saying “The Tombs are closed. Get out!”. It is at just this moment that Cassidy returns, walking down the stairs with an improvised paper-cutter hand and looking for a fight. Jody steps up but Jesse waves him off, thinking the only way to save Cass is to fight his one-time friend himself. A ferocious battle ensues, with Cass refusing to stay down when Jesse asks him. Tulip, fresh from hearing Sabina’s tale of Jesse having killed her brother, enters in time to see Jesse put a stake through Cass’s heart and declare himself a L’Angelle. He yells in her face for them to leave him and Angelville.

Tulip drives Cassidy to the bus stop. Cassidy thinks they are leaving together, but Tulip won’t leave Jesse. Cassidy tells her he loves her, but she replies she doesn’t love him. Cass seems about to use the love potion he got from Gran’ma, but at the last moment thinks the better of it and heads off to New Orleans.

Tulip knows Jesse isn’t as mean as he has been acting and returns to call him out on it. She doesn’t need anyone to keep her safe and she gets the truth out of him: he didn’t want to fight Kenny at all and his death was an accident. Jesse knows that that being around Angelville is like being around Chernobyl: The more time you spend there, the more your insides are gonna rot.

Sabina, after spending the night in Tulip’s trunk, tells Tulip that in order to break the spell that binds Jesse to Angelville, she just has to kill the only person Sabina hates more than Jesse: his gran’ma, the evil witch Marie. Whether doing so will actually free Jesse, or help Sabina get revenge on two L’Angelles at once, is still to be determined.

“It’s time”

I was excited to see Graham McTavish’s return as the Saint of Killers, even if it was only a brief one. Even Satan himself can’t make the Saint flinch as he is called into the Fallen One’s office to be punished for his previous escape. After having the Saint flayed to the bone, Satan sends him off (albeit without his guns) to retrieve two lost souls, presumably Eugene and Hitler.

From Panels to Screen:

The visual effects and makeup artists on the show did a great job of recreating Carlos Ezquerra’s vision of Hell and Satan from the Saint of Killers comic.

Satan, shirtless and with a huge rack of horns, looks just like the books, although his personality seems to have been enlarged for the show. Jason Douglas (The Walking Dead) portrays him as a wheeler-dealer, a slick agent-type who revels in evil.

You May Have Missed:

Satan is on the phone with the (as yet unseen) Allfather of the Grail when the Saint walks into his office.

A temporarily limbless Cassidy tries to sternly wag his finger at Jesse, but has only a stump to do it with.

Josh is a writer and a lover of The Simpsons, Monty Python, The State, Breaking Bad, Arrested Development, and Preacher. He spends probably too much time reading and has lately been attempting to eat the occasional vegetable, with limited success.